languages (such as Spanish Moro) comes from the Latin word Mauri. Who this word applied to, however, varied somewhat at different times. It seems originally to have applied by the Romans to a single tribe of Berbers, an ancient people indigenous to the Maghreb region of what is now northern Algeria and Morocco. Later, however, the Romans called all the non-Romanized native peoples of North Africa Mauri, so the word came to mean simply "North African."
Later still, in the Middle Ages, after North Africa, and then most of Spain, became part of Islamic civilization, the word Moor was used by Europeans to distinguish western Muslims, in both North Africa and Spain, from Muslims living farther east, in Egypt and the Middle East, whom medieval Europeans called Saracens. Other West Africans were also often called Moors, but the word was applied mainly to Muslims from North Africa and Spain. That is how it will be used for the most part in this discussion, except when speaking of the pre-Islamic era.
In prehistoric times, several thousand years ago, the Sahara was not yet a full desert. Nomadic tribes could move freely through much of western Africa. As the climate of the interior gradually became drier, movement was restricted to a few caravan routes. Because of the freedom of movement in ancient times, however, the population of North Africa was ethnically diverse. Further intermixture occurred over the centuries as Phoenicians, Romans, and Arabs successively conquered or settled in North Africa. Thus, there has never been any such a thing as a Moorish "race."
Sometime before about 800 BCE, Phoenicians (from modern Lebanon) established trading posts on the coast of North Africa. One of these, Carthage, near modern Tunis, became the center of a colonial empire that loosely controlled much of North Africa and parts of Spain. Carthage fought a series of wars with Rome, most famous now for the brilliant Carthagenian gener...